Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to Hooked. I'm Rachel, your guide through the perplexing and sometimes deadly world of Internet catfishing. Why do people catfish? And how many lies can they tell.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Before they get caught?
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Stick around to find out in this week's episode.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Hooked Nekechi Diallo has been having a rough couple of years. A talented artist, she's been able to scrape together money by selling a few paintings as well as writing grants and braiding hair. But it's not nearly enough to support herself and her two sons, Franklin and Langston. In 2023, she'd managed to get a job at a school district in Arizona as a substitute teacher, but less than a year later was fired when the district discovered she had an onlyfans.
But her money troubles stemmed from something deeper than a crappy job market or even breaking the school district's social media rules. Her problems started years ago, before she went by Nekechi, when she was still going by her birth name. Rachel Dolezal Rachel Ann Dolezal was born on November 12, 1977 in Lincoln County, Montana, to parents Ruthanne and Larry. From birth, Rachel believes she was seen as the black sheep of the family.
Devout fundamentalist Pentecostals, Larry and Ruthanne had decided for a home birth for Rachel, and Rachel's birth had been complicated, resulting in Ruthanne nearly hemorrhaging to death. Where older brother Josh's birth had been easy, Rachel's was traumatic and tainted her in her parents eyes. Creative From a young age, Rachel enjoyed drawing self portraits and according to her, from day one she would always draw herself with brown skin and curly hair despite having white skin and straight blonde hair. But Rachel says that her parents, who often spoke in tongues, didn't appreciate her creative gifts.
Larry and Ruthanne would say I was possessed and exorcise my demons because I was very creative and that was seen as sensual, which was of the devil. I had to redeem myself from being me. And while Rachel's four younger siblings can attest to the dole is all parents being physically abusive. We have to take much of what Rachel says with a grain of salt because she made a lot of other claims about her past that she'd later admit were creative nonfiction, such as being beaten by her white stepfather. She never had a stepfather and both her parents were white, claiming that she was born in a tipi and lived in South Africa as a child. Both statements are untrue. The Dovazal parents and younger siblings did do missionary work in South Africa for four years, but Rachel was married and in college by that point, she also claimed that her family foraged for berries and hunted elk, but but not with a shotgun as one might expect, but instead with a bow and arrow. When Rachel was an older teenager, Larry and Ruthanne felt called by God to rescue children from being aborted through adoption. They adopted four black children, including one from Haiti. But according to youngest daughter Esther, they didn't really know what to do with the fact that four of their children were black. In the documentary the Rachel Divide, Esther says, they just tried to raise us to be white. We didn't have any pride in ourselves. We didn't know who we were. We were just white people with skin conditions. Rachel took a more active role in her siblings racial identity. She learned how to braid their hair and took out books from the library about black history and historical figures. She said, a funny thing happened. I began to feel even more connected to it myself. I began to see the world through black eyes. Rachel claims that she spent the remainder of her teen years not only teaching her younger siblings, but raising them. As Ruthanne had diagnosed herself with chronic fatigue syndrome and no longer had the energy to run after four small children. Rachel claims that around this time, the year 1998 or so, people started to assume she was biracial and she saw no reason to correct them. Despite being the primary caregiver for her siblings, Rachel was able to graduate high school in 1996 with a 4.0 GPA and as co valedictorian of her home school group, Christian Liberty Academy, against her parents best efforts. She was still very artistic and much of her art reflected black or African themes.
She decided to pursue an arts related degree at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi. According to Rachel, she chose the college for the city, saying that she'd read about a church there that preached racial reconciliation and ran a Christian community in which black and white people lived in harmony.
While at Belhaven, Rachel joined the Black Students Union.
I didn't really feel comfortable around southern whites because the worldview in the south is just so ingrained. But I felt this huge sense of homecoming with regards to the black community. On the white side I noticed hatred, fear and ignorance. On the black side I noticed fear, anger and pain. I felt more at home with the anger and pain towards whites because I had some anger and pain toward not just my parents, but also even though I wouldn't have been able to articulate it towards white supremacy. This statement from Rachel hints at why she may have faked her identity in the way that she did. Down the line, Sister Esther believes that the hatred and ignorance Rachel saw in her fellow white people, and especially her parents, drove Rachel away from the white race as a whole and was at least partly responsible for her claim to be black. Esther said it was a way of dissociation, being like, I have nothing to do with these people. I'm different. As stated, it was around this time that Rachel claims people began to see her as mixed race. I can't think of any reason for people to mistake the blonde haired, green eyed woman as anything but white. Except that it was also around this time that Rachel began to braid her hair in an African style. Rachel's parents hated that she braided her hair, but according to Rachel, the black women in her church loved it, saying to copy is to compliment. In addition to braiding her hair and indulging in her artistic side at school, Rachel was able to explore something her sexuality. She'd known for a long time that she was bisexual, but of course that wouldn't have been entertained by the Dolezal parents. Rachel said that her first kiss was with a woman. Immediately after graduating with her undergraduate degree, Rachel Rachel moved on to grad school pursuing a Master's of Fine arts. For all her faults and deceptions, it must be said Rachel is an extremely talented fine artist. Her artwork is featured in the documentary the Rachel Divide and she's shown painting in real time. And she is very good. And just as with her artwork in college, the portfolio that got her into her MFA program featured exclusively black and African themes. But Rachel may have deemed this appropriate because the university she applied to for her MFA was Howard University, the historically black school in Washington, D.C. rachel didn't claim to be black while at Howard, but she did continue to braid her hair and wear dashikis. She says no one thought it was weird that she was there the whole first year. Everything was fine. Everyone was cool. One of them, a medical student named Kevin Moore, was so cool that she married him within a year of meeting him in 2000.
A black man himself, Kevin wasn't thrilled at the way his new wife presented. She had told Kevin she was white and he disapproved of her braids and dashikis. In fact, he disapproved of her being at Howard in the first place. He couldn't understand why a white person would want to attend a historically black school. Rachel says that her commentary did make her pull back from presenting in ways that might be considered black. Rachel got pregnant during her second year at Howard, and her pregnancy caused all kinds of trouble for her. Rachel had a scholarship to Howard and had been granted a teaching assistant job the year prior. And she claims that after the university found out she was pregnant, she was denied scholarship funds and was cut as a ta. But there was something else, too. Her artwork had been removed from a student exhibit because Rachel was a white woman. At least according to her, she needed her scholarship, so she sued.
I would say the primary discrimination was gender. It sounds bad, right? I just played that card for my advantage. But I knew that if I did not have my scholarship, we were going to lose our apartment and Kevin was going to have to drop out of school. The case never went to trial, though, as the court said, she failed to prove her claims. She then had to pay the university's legal fees. On top of not having her scholarship and having a new baby, somehow she managed to stay in school and complete her mfa. Her thesis was a collection of paintings from the perspective of a black man. According to various sources, Rachel and Kevin's marriage was not a happy one. They stayed together until their son Franklin was about 4 years old, after which they got divorced. Following the divorce, Rachel told the guardian, for the first time in my life, I really decided consciously to be free from repression, free from feeling like I had to do things in a way that was acceptable to other people. I had the courage to be exactly who I was.
And who was Rachel Dolezal? A black woman. She tanned or wore bronzer, braided her hair or wore weaves. And she started checking black on official forums, asking about race. If asked in person, she would claim that she was biracial.
I felt like by not talking about my biological ancestry, I gave people the opportunity to relate to me as an individual, not part of a group.
I feel like the idea of being trans black would be much more accurate than saying I'm white because I'm not white. To say that I'm black is to say, this is how I see the world. This is the philosophy, the history. This is what I love and what I honor. Calling myself black feels more accurate than saying I'm white.
If you haven't caught on yet. Rachel lies a lot about everything and anything. Her upbringing, her family, even her health. She claims to have had cervical cancer from 2006 to 2008, but younger brother Ezra said this is most likely false. In 2007, Rachel was working as an art teacher at School Indigo in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho. She loved making pieces with her students to benefit the Human Rights Education Institute. A year later, she proudly accepted the position of education director of the Same Institute.
In 2010, Rachel became the legal guardian of her 16 year old brother Isaiah. Isaiah couldn't take living with the Dolezal parents anymore, saying that the parents beat the children and threatened to send them to group homes. And while Rachel would never have abandoned her siblings, it's somewhat surprising that she agreed to become Isaiah's guardian, as she and son Franklin had been experiencing terrible race centered threats for the last two years or so. Rachel claimed that a noose was found tied in her garage rafters and that a swastika sticker was left on the door of the Institute. She also said that hate mail was left in the mailbox of the Education Department.
Things were also going south at the Human Rights Institute itself. The executive director position was open and Rachel wanted it. Upon applying for it, she let the board know that she would resign from the Education Department if not given the position.
But the staff at the Human Rights Institute was getting suspicious of Rachel and her constant claims of racial attacks. Aside from the fact that many people didn't believe that Rachel was black or multiracial at all, as one colleague said, nobody has that much bad luck. When the hate mail appeared in the Institute's mailbox, the company took it seriously and conducted an investigation.
What was found was that while the envelope had a stamp, it had no postal markings or barcodes. The letter hadn't gone through the mail. Someone had to have hand delivered the letter, and the only people who could have accessed that mailbox by hand were Rachel and one of the colleagues.
It seems that most people at the Institute believed that Rachel had sent those letters to herself. Even younger brother Ezra, a teenager at the time, said she made herself into a martyr on purpose so people would feel sorry for her and help her.
After leaving her position at the Institute and after facing the side eyes from her Idaho community, Rachel decided it was time for a change. She moved with son Franklin and brother Isaiah to Spokane, where she got a job at Eastern Washington University, teaching classes like the Black Woman's Struggle and Introduction to Africana Studies.
Soon after the small family made the move, the family added a new member, Rachel's youngest brother, Ezra. According to Ezra, when he arrived in Spokane, Rachel said to him, everyone here knows me as black. Don't blow my cover.
And indeed, she'd taken further steps to change her appearance, perming her naturally straight hair and dyeing it from blonde to dark brown.
Rachel joined the local chapter of the NAACP not long after arriving in Spokane. But she wasn't content to be a passive member or even a face in the crowd at protests.
She wanted to be president, and so she became president of the chapter in 2014.
She was considered an ambitious activist and was even credited with revitalizing the chapter. She made close friends in the organization and even began introducing a friend named Albert Wilkerson as her father. Rachel was still on her bullshit though, when it came to lying, and not just about her race. In June of 2015, she was accused by arts and culture writer for the Huffington Post, Priscilla Frank of plagiarism.
According to Frank, one of Rachel's new paintings, the Shape of Our Kind, was nearly identical to an 1840 J.M.W. turner work called the Slave Ship. I can't claim to be an art expert, but they do look similar. You be the judge, though. I'll put a picture of both works on the show Instagram. June 2015, as it turned out, was to be the most trying month of Rachel's recent life. On top of the legitimacy of her art being questioned, it was also in this month that her biggest lie would come to light.
As it turned out, Rachel had the biggest hand in her own discovery by telling lies on top of lies. The pile grew too high eventually and toppled over, beginning with her claims of being the target of the aforementioned hate crimes and the investigation that followed. As part of the investigation, a reporter went to her chapter of the NAACP because surely if Rachel was being targeted, other black people in the community were also being targeted.
But no one had anything to report.
In fact, a report from Rachel's old place of residence, Coeur d' Alene, noticed that the hate crimes seemed to follow Rachel wherever she went, first in Idaho and now in her newer city of Spokane. The investigator thought the whole thing seemed fishy. One of the NAACP members that reporter Sell interviewed multiple times was Albert Wilkerson, the man whom Rachel claims was her father.
In all three interviews, Wilkerson denied that he was in any way related to Rachel. She called him dad as a term of endearment and to indicate their deep relationship, but they shared no familial connection.
Sell hit the ground running with this information, and it didn't take long for the city editor of Coeur d' Alene Press, Maureen Dolan, to track down a photo of Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal. It's not a common surname, after all, Cell said Maureen asked Rachel point blank if she was African American, and she said she was transracial. The only reason we asked if she was is because she claimed it was a racial attack. Rachel's confession, Sell said, was problematic because she has a very powerful position on the police Oversight Committee. Any complaints against the police come to this commission, which allowed her claims of hate crimes to be taken more seriously. By the time she'd lived in Spokane for a bit, Rachel had allegedly been victim of nine hate crimes in nearly as many years.
Using the information Dolan had found, Sell contacted Rachel's mother back in Montana.
Ruthanne provided sel pictures of their white, naturally blonde daughter, as well as a copy of her birth certificate, which, fun fact, listed Jesus Christ as one of the witnesses to her birth. Her parents said she may have felt she had some advantage in her activism by being seen as black. We hope that Rachel will get the help she needs to deal with her identity issues.
Of course we love her, and we hope that she will come to a place where she knows and believes and speaks the truth. And Rachel's response to this whole thing? A whole lot of denial and avoidance. Any interviewer who tried to get answers from her was either ignored or told that they didn't know what they were talking about. She said of Ruthanne and Larry. Up to this point, I know who raised me. I haven't had a DNA test. There's been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my parents. I'm not saying I can prove they're not, but I don't know that I can actually prove they are.
Even when Rachel stepped down as president of Spokane's NAACP and followed up the resignation with a lengthy Facebook post. She never mentioned the scandal, only spoke reverently of the Black Lives Matter movement. She also didn't apologize for the controversy. Nor did she apologize when her lawsuit against Howard University came to light, the one in which she accused the school of being prejudiced because she was white.
People immediately distanced themselves from Rachel. Her son and siblings stuck by her, but everyone else backed away.
Her father figure, Albert Wilkerson, cut contact with her. She was asked to resign from her position as the chair of the Police Ombudsman Commission because, legally, she had violated government rules and abused her authority, along with a pattern of misconduct. Her biography was removed from Eastern Washington University's website. She was kicked out of a women's leadership group and fired as a freelance newspaper columnist.
And to add more complications, the week after her lie was discovered, Rachel found out she was pregnant.
Now expecting a second child, or really a third, since brother Isaiah was still living with her. And with no job, Rachel had little to do besides being a mother. So she took up authors to appear on TV discussing her claims of being transracial. She appeared on Inside Edition, the Today Show, Newsnight, the Real and Dr. Phil, to name a few. Over the next few years while on the Real, host Loni Love gave Rachel a little pushback after Rachel quoted activist Dick Gregory. White isn't a race. It's a state of mind.
No, let me tell you something, lonnie said. I'm black. I can't be you. I can't reverse myself. That's the difference.
Something similar was said by Ed Prince, the executive director of the Washington State Commission on African American Affairs.
Rachel's actions go to the heart of white privilege. An African American can never wake up and say, I'm gonna make my hair blonde, put on white makeup and go through my days as a white person.
Rachel attempted to rebuild her life, but it was hard. She gave birth to son Langston in February 2016.
There's an interesting clip in the documentary about her, the Rachel Divide, in which she is filling out forms after giving birth. When she gets to the baby's race portion of the form, she pauses and tells son Franklin and brother Isaiah that she doesn't know what to check. Baby Langston is black, as his father is black. But when a baby is born, their race is determined by the mother's race, and to lie about one's race on these forms is against the law.
In the end, Rachel checks both black and white.
She got a book deal after being rejected by 30 publishing houses. Her memoir, In Full Finding My Place in a Black and White World, was published on March 30, 2017.
Two years and a month later, Rachel would be charged with two felonies of welfare fraud. She'd been on food stamps, collecting unemployment and receiving free childcare, claiming to earn less than $500 a month while actually pulling in 84,000 in total from her book. She was ordered to pay the money back of the services she'd received, about $9,000, as well as complete 120 hours of community service.
Things weren't getting easier socially either. People of all colors were angry with Rachel.
Right now, the only place I feel understood and completely accepted is with my kids and my sister, she added. The narrative was that I defended both communities in an unforgivable way. So anybody who gave me a dime would be contributing wrong and oppression and bad things to a liar and a fraud and a con.
One person did come back into her life, Albert Wilkerson. He said that while he'd needed some distance at first, he'd come to understand Rachel's point of view.
Race was created by Europeans, and they were wrong. But Rachel doesn't regret starting the conversation, turning herself into a martyr for the cause. It needs to be talked about, so it's kind of helpful to create a punching bag. I'm this generic, ambiguous scapegoat for white people to call me a race traitor and take out their hostility on, and I'm a target for anger and pain about white people from the black community. It's like I'm the worst of all of these worlds.
In 2021, Rachel went on the Tamron hall show, telling the host that she was having trouble finding a job. Despite changing her name to Nkechi Diallo, people still recognized her, and she said that at the moment, she made money by braiding hair, writing grants and painting.
In the Rachel Divide, Rachel remarks to her sister Esther that despite the scandal, Rachel hadn't lost a single braiding client.
The rest of the world, though, beyond Rachel's family and her clients were still leery of her. As observed by Rachel, both black and white people seemed to despise her. Some white people saw Rachel as a race traitor. Some black people saw her as having cheated black people out of positions that were rightly theirs. Others were angry that Rachel's stunt had distracted from the important work that the NAACP did. Verla Spencer, a Spokane civil rights leader, said, I think this is a setback. It's sad we have to focus so much on this when there's so much more work to do. Some people have even questioned her mental health. Camille Gere Rich, a black woman and a professor of law and sociology at usc, said, being black is such a stigmatized identity that someone who would opt out of whiteness into blackness is showing a sign of mental illness. A reporter from the Guardian wrote, sometimes I wonder whether the isolation of her childhood left her strangely disconnected, naive about human nature and unable to grasp the way that most people's minds work. Even her own son, Franklin, wants his mom to drop the act. Rachel's choices aren't just affecting her, but her family. In the Rachel Divide, he says, I'm gonna be honest. I'm definitely running out of patience for this. I would go back to when I was happy if she said, hey, I'm white, but she's never gonna do that. You can't tell my mom what to do or how to think. I hope this would just all go away so I can get on with my life and not worry about it. Isaiah, too, has been affected. At the time of the documentary, Isaiah was looking into colleges, and Rachel very much wanted him to go to Howard like her. But the Dolezal name holds weight and not in a good way. In fact, I wonder if Rachel, having changed her own name, ever offered her brother and sons the opportunity to change theirs. The most up to date information I could find on Rachel was from 2024. As mentioned in the beginning of the episode, she'd finally found employment at the Catalina Foothills School District in Arizona for the 2023-20 year, earning $19 an hour as a substitute teacher and an after school instructor. Unfortunately, she didn't make it through the year as she was dismissed after the district found out she had gnomely fans. Despite Rachel protesting that her of content was tasteful, containing only pictures of her working out as well as her feet, the district determined that she had broken the use of social media and staff ethics policies. But Rachel doesn't appear to be changing her identity anytime soon.
Being black is like home to me. I don't feel like I'm ever going to be hurt so much that I somehow leave who I am because I'm me. It really is who I am. It's not a choice.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Thanks for checking out Hooked this week. We'll be back next week with a new story, but for right now you can find me on social media, on Twitter hookedpodcast one that's the number one at the end on Instagram hookedpodcast and on Facebook Hooked Up Hooked the podcast. Also, I'd love it if you left me a five star review on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you really like what I'm doing, head on over to patreon.com hookedthepod where you can get access to early episodes and regularly released bonus episodes. Again, thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next week.
